TY - JOUR
T1 - Testing general relativity using golden black-hole binaries
AU - Ghosh, Abhirup
AU - Ghosh, Archisman
AU - Johnson-Mcdaniel, Nathan K.
AU - Mishra, Chandra Kant
AU - Ajith, Parameswaran
AU - Del Pozzo, Walter
AU - Nichols, David A.
AU - Chen, Yanbei
AU - Nielsen, Alex B.
AU - Berry, Christopher Philip Luke
AU - London, Lionel
N1 - Funding Information:
Y.C. research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant No.PHY-1404569, and D.N. was supported by National Science Foundation Grant No.PHY-1404105. C.P.L.B. was supported by the Science and Technology Facilities Council. Computations were performed at the ICTS clusters Mowgli, Dogmatix, and Alice.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 American Physical Society.
PY - 2016/7/11
Y1 - 2016/7/11
N2 - The coalescences of stellar-mass black-hole binaries through their inspiral, merger, and ringdown are among the most promising sources for ground-based gravitational-wave (GW) detectors. If a GW signal is observed with sufficient signal-to-noise ratio, the masses and spins of the black holes can be estimated from just the inspiral part of the signal. Using these estimates of the initial parameters of the binary, the mass and spin of the final black hole can be uniquely predicted making use of general-relativistic numerical simulations. In addition, the mass and spin of the final black hole can be independently estimated from the merger-ringdown part of the signal. If the binary black-hole dynamics is correctly described by general relativity (GR), these independent estimates have to be consistent with each other. We present a Bayesian implementation of such a test of general relativity, which allows us to combine the constraints from multiple observations. Using kludge modified GR waveforms, we demonstrate that this test can detect sufficiently large deviations from GR and outline the expected constraints from upcoming GW observations using the second-generation of ground-based GW detectors.
AB - The coalescences of stellar-mass black-hole binaries through their inspiral, merger, and ringdown are among the most promising sources for ground-based gravitational-wave (GW) detectors. If a GW signal is observed with sufficient signal-to-noise ratio, the masses and spins of the black holes can be estimated from just the inspiral part of the signal. Using these estimates of the initial parameters of the binary, the mass and spin of the final black hole can be uniquely predicted making use of general-relativistic numerical simulations. In addition, the mass and spin of the final black hole can be independently estimated from the merger-ringdown part of the signal. If the binary black-hole dynamics is correctly described by general relativity (GR), these independent estimates have to be consistent with each other. We present a Bayesian implementation of such a test of general relativity, which allows us to combine the constraints from multiple observations. Using kludge modified GR waveforms, we demonstrate that this test can detect sufficiently large deviations from GR and outline the expected constraints from upcoming GW observations using the second-generation of ground-based GW detectors.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevD.94.021101
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevD.94.021101
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84978434494
SN - 2470-0010
VL - 94
JO - Physical Review D
JF - Physical Review D
IS - 2
M1 - 021101
ER -